Share This Story!

Texas police buy high-flying, high-tech spy plane

In a little-noticed July purchase, officials at the Texas Department of Public Safety inked a $7.4 million contract with the Swiss company Pilatus Aircraft Ltd. for a high-altitude spy plane. Unique technology

The Swiss-made Pilatus PC-12 NG Spectre, purchased in July, is being modified and will be delivered early next year. Its surveillance gear is the same as that used by the pilotless U.S. drones in war zones and elsewhere around the globe.

The CIR writes that the piloted plane's "[u]nique technology ... could raise the ire of civil libertarians and privacy advocates."

Among its features is a $1 million array of surveillance cameras with high-resolution and thermal-imaging capabilities, and a $300,000 downlink system that enables the plane's crew to send real-time surveillance images anywhere in the state, according to records obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting through the Texas Public Information Act. The package will also come with four sets of night-vision goggles worth about $60,000, records show.

The latest fleet addition for Texas has a single engine instead of two, which saves on costs while still permitting a relatively large payload. The Pilatus cabin is also pressurized so it can fly at higher altitudes, up to 30,000 feet in the air.

Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Jim Vinger said the plane would operate mostly along the U.S.-Mexico border, and "serve as a tool in assisting specific joint operations that are clearly defined by area and duration."

The CIR also notes that in 2009 Phoenix police spent $4.1 million on a Pilatus PC-12 with a high-definition, day-and-night camera featuring "ultra-long-range imaging performance."

In August, Los Angeles police contracted with a private firm for a small Cessna that can stay aloft up to 10 hours and send live video to a dispatch center.

Regarding drones, Texas state police stopped using them two years ago because of complicated FAA rules, maintenance costs and "deficient video quality," Vinger said.

Congress has since directed the Federal Aviation Administration to draft regulations within three years to allow unmanned aircraft to roam America's skies.

The idea of police drones leaves many Americans uneasy, but more appear to support their use domestically.

In a poll on privacy released last month by the National Constitution Center and the Associated Press, 44% of respondents favored the use of police drones, with 36% opposed and 17% undecided.

"I figure if you're doing something wrong, then you should be concerned about it," said poll respondent Sheana Buchanan, 49, of Apple Valley, Calif. "But if you're a law-abiding citizen, if you're concerned about safety ... and it's going to help catch the bad guys, have at it."

But Houston real estate agent Tim Johnson told AP he fears that police-collected data would be misused, especially by government agencies and perhaps for political purposes.

Pointing to the growing use of traffic cameras and the Google's mapping programs, Johnson said he sees police use of drones as an extension of technology trends that are already eroding privacy.

"I Googled my house," Johnson said. "There's my car sitting in the driveway — you can see the license plate number. And my living room picture window, you can see right into my living room. You can see my pictures on the wall. If I had been standing there in my underwear you could see me in my underwear." Google says it tries to ensure privacy by blurring parts of images in its Street View feature.

"This information — there is just too much of it," Johnson said. "I don't support any of it."

"Piloted or unpiloted, the issues posed are the same," Jim Dempsey, from the Center for Democracy and Technology in San Francisco, told the CIR. "Does the use of the technology constitute a 'search' under the Fourth Amendment? Regardless of whether it does or not, what checks and balances do we think are appropriate for the use of such technology?"